Number one among my posts in the the 2026 Nonfiction Reader Challenge. My category is that of a Nonfiction Grazer, the description of which is: "Read & review any nonfiction book. Set your own goal, or none at all, just share the nonfiction you read through the year." This best fits my nonconformist style.
A new cousin with whom I share eastern Tennesee/western Virginia roots recommended Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class by Max Fraser (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2023) when I told her that my great-grandfather and great-grandmother Nave moved from eastern Tennessee to South Bend, Indiana. I didn't give any details; I just mentioned in passing one of the links between her family and mine.
The "Hillbilly Highway" is a series of routes from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia to cities in the upper midwest: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana figure largely in the destinations of this migration. The author, Max Fraser, attributes this migration to the changing economic conditions in the upper south, including the shrinking of family farmland, which was being bought up by mining, transportation, and government interests (the latter being mainly the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority for the purposes of rural electrification). The migrants looked for factory work and mining in the upper midwest, where they could make a great deal more money than on hardscrabble farming.
This phenomenon of forced migration due to economics took place in the years encompassing World War II, according to Fraser, and lasted into the 1960s. In that, this theory covers a time period fifty years too late to include my family. My great-grandparents Nave were in South Bend, Indiana, by 1892, which is when my grandmother was born in that city. Fraser sees the people affected by the changing economy of the southern areas as farmers, suffering the loss of farmlands to the interests mentioned above. My great-grandfather and many men in the Nave family were merchants. Great-grandpa was a grocer. He was one in Tennessee and in Indiana.
Fraser sees a pattern in that the people, mostly men, who made this change from the south to the upper midwest did not stay permanently there. Many returned to their southern homes for planting season or harvest, or for family celebrations. I have found no indication that my great-grandfather and great-grandmother ever made any return trips to Tennessee. That raises a question of whether their hegira to Indiana might have been motivated by personal reasons, some sort of difficulty within the family. Once in Indiana, they stayed there, first in South Bend and then in Logansport.
While this particular theory does not appear to apply to my family, it is an interesting look at the middle of the 20th century. The Dust Bowl was not, apparently, the only motivation that put people on the road from one section of the country to another. Fraser's research supports his theory. He includes some individual histories of some who found themselves in this migration. Some of the people involved, either as migrants or as entrepreneurs who provided the transportation for these migrants along the "Hillbilly Highway" routes delineated by Fraser, were indeed colorful characters. That gives an engaging leavening to the statistics and dates and facts that makes the book readable. It is an excellent example of the trend away from the Great Man sort of history to history of ordinary people who really build the United States.
The author is a former journalist and currently is an assistant professor of history at the University of Miami.
Recommended to readers with an interest in History and fans of the 20th Century.
